My review of A Conspiracy of Truths went up at Strange Horizons a few months back. I’m a fan of the author’s podcast (although, as with most things in life, I’m woefully behind on it), and I picked up this novel out of a desire to support her. I wound up really enjoying this “fantasy of fake news” quite a lot, even if its take on a “fantasy of fake news” isn’t quite what I expected from the elevator pitch.

You will note that the review doesn’t engage at all with the hopepunk discourse, which blew up while I was writing it. This was a deliberate choice on the part of me and my editor at Strange Horizons. Since nobody is paying me to write here, and since my morning coffee hasn’t fully metabolized yet, I will just say that I find the concept of hopepunk desperately undertheorized, which is a fancy way of saying “not framed with anywhere near enough conceptual rigor.” I will also say that I’m with AOC (always)–I think hope is something you have to do and be rather than waiting for it to come to you externally.